A lot of people on here claim they're "enlightened" after some dramatic experience. Perhaps a world shattering DMT trip or some very colourful hallucinations or more often, a real genuine Earth shattering moment of absolute insight. These things are perfectly fine and often very meaningful but I think it's dangerous to view enlightenment as something so dramatic and so final. If enlightenment involves insight into the world at all, then it cannot be something esoteric, obscure, or mad, because the world is not esoteric but present and vivid and real and whole; full of hidden depths and plain old flowers you simply can reach out and smell, and these are the same, equally meaningful, and equally essential to be intimate with. In short, enlightenment cannot be gnosis. Enlightenment is absolute clarity. Awakening. Simplicity. Emptiness. Enlightenment is looking at what has always been in front of you with fresh accepting eyes. Enlightenment is when the torrent in your head stops, and you have space for silence. Finally you can take things as they are. Finally you can see the world for what it is. Enlightenment is simple, unimpressive, expected. You were in pain and one day it stopped. You were in your own head and one day you left it. Everything else people want enlightenment to be is an experience, an encounter, an event; but enlightenment is how you approach events, not an event to be encountered. Enlightenment is a process, not an end.